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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322067">journalistic integrity</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins'>kickedshins</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>King Falls AM (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, The Power Of Love, duh guys it's kfam there's always the power of love, get thee to a psychiatrist ben arnold, i get really sappy at the end sorry, in a sense i guess, mentions of sammy and musings on their friendship, notebook :/, takes place before episode 44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:02:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,364</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322067</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben’s got a fire in him that’s at risk of burning nearby things if he lets it get too hot, and Ben wants to please them all, he wants to help them all, he wants to do this and to do this right, but it’s all so damn hard when it’s all so damn much. He feels, sometimes, like a machine that has too many inputs and not enough outputs and all his coding builds up inside of him until it comes bursting out of busted-up faucets before he has the chance to filter himself. And journalistic integrity, cold hard numbers, not falling prey to his own emotions? Those can’t always be a broken machine’s top priority.<br/>“Fact,” he says slowly to himself, forcing his gears to stop whirring at top speed. “Fact. I fuckin’ hate not knowing for sure how this’ll go.”</p><p>or</p><p>Ben's plans are finally coming to a close. He really loves Emily Potter, and, tonight, he's going to return her safely to Earth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Arnold/Emily Potter, in that he's trying to get her back and he loves her</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>journalistic integrity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi this fell out of me i just really love ben arnold i just really love him so much this is all written from memory so sorry if i got some timeline stuff wrong. also i feel very strongly that emily and sammy should have biweekly brunches so i will make a point to reference that in all or most of my kfam fics. anyways. enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There’s something to be said about journalistic integrity. There’s a lot to be said about journalistic integrity, actually. Ben’s very adamant about this. And now, as he sits with his notes and his plans and a tightness in his chest that refuses to abate, he thinks about journalistic integrity. About cold hard facts and objective truth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t want to be afraid. So he lists. He’s always a mile a minute and a tangled ball of ideas, but if he forces himself to, he can follow a singular thread for a bit and order things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He imagines this all as a new notebook to be filled in. A new radio show scheduled to be planned. A new article to write for the school paper, or whatever. He’s been proselytizing journalistic integrity for this long. He can break things down and look at them without emotional biases clouding his judgment. He can try, at least. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Ben Arnold doesn’t give up. Never has, never will. He keeps pushing forwards and forwards and sometimes he gets tired without realizing and sometimes he pushes forwards a little too much and pushes past his limits, but at least he’s one step closer to his goal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that this is at all mercenary, of course. He hates people who do things only for personal gain. He hates people for whom ambition is an inherently dirty emotion. This forever movement is, for him, done out of care, out of passion. It’s done with heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stares, unblinking, at his notebook. His foot jumps up and down. Always in motion, of course. Always trying to run ahead. Not away, but ahead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has to keep moving. He has to keep this momentum up. He has to reach this finish line, because there’s finally a finish line to all this business, and it’s just within his line of sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Ben Arnold loves Emily Potter. Most people do, and if they don’t, they really should. She’s a lovable woman. She’s kind and smart and beautiful and Ben wants so very ardently to get her back. Needs to get her back, actually, because if he doesn’t get her back, he’ll have failed himself. He’ll have failed her. He’ll have failed the town, and he cannot let that many people down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Ben Arnold can’t even let one person down. And that’s what he did, didn’t he? With Sammy? He spent a few minutes—or, more honestly, a few hours—scribbling theories in a notebook and let Sammy down. Broke his trust. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trust is a two-way street with potholes that constantly have to be filled. This is, on occasion, a difficult concept with which Ben has to grapple. He dives straight into the deep end of any sort of relationship, and his friendship with Sammy was started no differently, so it’s sometimes difficult to tell if they’re on the same page, pun not intended. And in this case, they weren’t, and neither of them really got that, and they’re working on patching up a massive pothole that stretches across both lanes, but Ben’s mostly upset about the fact that this blip in the system happened in the first place. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben was pissed at Sammy for not opening up. Sammy was pissed at Ben for deciding to go all Cronkite, Brokaw, Ben Arnold on his best friend. It was this whole cyclical thing, this ebb and flow of anger and feelings of betrayal and distrust and letting each other down, and it’s ridiculous because Ben has only known Sammy for a year or so, but Ben feels safe and sure with Sammy, and, up until Ben swerved onto Paranoia Lane, Sammy felt safe and sure with Ben, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Families fight, but that doesn’t mean that Ben has to be happy with that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Families can resolve their issues. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: There’s trust between them again, and it’s marginally strained, but it’s so very far from broken. Ben doesn’t know what he’d do if he ruined their relationship irreparably. He doesn’t know what Sammy would do, either. It’s not as if Sammy doesn’t have other friends, of course, but Ben operates on his schedule and Ben knows how he takes his coffee and Ben can tell without asking when he needs to cut to commercial. Ben wants to care for Sammy, but Sammy doesn’t like showing that he needs care, and though, at times, Sammy’s confusingly cautious about loving back (Ben doesn’t exactly get why all people don’t feel everything as strongly as he himself does, don’t feel everything as quickly and overwhelmingly as he himself does), Ben loves him with all he has. Sammy’s his best friend. Sammy’s his co-captain. Sammy’s getting ready for a night sat in the radio station on call with Ben because he’s back to trusting in Ben’s plans and intentions and he believes in Ben, believes that Ben can do this, and wants to be there for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben’s fixed things with Sammy. He can make the Emily situation right, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His foot picks up speed. He tries his best to slow it down, but it’s essentially fruitless. The second he pauses, fear grips his throat like a vice. What if he can’t do this? What if this is an endless chase, Sisyphus and his boulder, Ben and his savior complex? What if he pushes himself too far too many times without realizing and he can’t get himself back, let alone Emily?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: Getting Emily Potter back won’t fix this about Ben, won’t change the fact that he’s got this chronic fear of stopping for even a second, because he knows he’s going to find a new project to put too much of himself into as soon as this one’s finished, but getting Emily Potter back might give him a moment’s rest. It might give him another place to feel safe. It might add another member to their family, and Ben can’t let his family down, of course, so it’s another responsibility, but any responsibility is worth having Emily safe and sound back here in King Falls. His head feels static and fuzzy and his heart swells bigger and bigger every day until he thinks it might burst from the amount of love he has for her. For the amount he misses her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not just for him. She was a staple of the community. As a librarian, of course, but also as a friend. Every single person loves her, Ben’s sure of it, and why shouldn’t they? She gives fantastic book recommendations. She’s allegedly a talented baker, though Ben, of course, hasn’t had the chance to try her baked goods, what with her and her cake being stolen away on the same night. And Sammy says she tipped well—<em>tips</em> well, because Emily Potter does not deserve the past tense—and offered to pay whenever the two of them got brunch together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben, for his part, can barely remember a single time he talked to her where he didn’t end up tripping over his words. Though, Emily aside, it’s not as if he has many conversations with anyone where his mind doesn’t go faster than his mouth can manage. So it’s not all that different from usual.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben sighs. Stands up. Pushes his chair in. He’s already mentally strayed too far along some tangential line to what he’s pretty sure was originally supposed to be a way for him to try and cope with the feelings building up inside, but in a completely characteristic move, he’s forgotten what the original point at which he was trying to get was. Besides, facts and figures aren’t really his thing. Numbers are unforgiving, and Ben might be a petty and longtime grudge-holder, but he’s certainly not as cruel and calculating as math is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He paces around his room, rubbing a thumb up and down his forearm. “Fact,” he says under his breath. “I love her. Fact. I’ll do this. Fact. It’s okay, Ben, it’s okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s got this planned out in detail. He’s got notebooks and heart and a team. He’s got love on his side, of course, and with love on his side, he can’t lose. And, sure, he might be listening to too much </span>
  <em>
    <span>Legally Blonde: The Musical</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and, sure, that might be a bit of a yellow-crayon sort of mindset, but first of all, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Buffy </span>
  </em>
  <span>is a fantastic show and the yellow crayon speech is a fantastic speech, and second of all, optimism is a wonderful thing, and third of all, yeah, with love on his side, he really cannot lose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: He will succeed. Fact: No one will get hurt. Fact: He’ll get Emily back, and they’ll hug, or do whatever is medically recommended for someone who’s just been returned from wherever honest-to-Jack-in-the-Box-Jesus aliens were keeping her, and she’ll thank him, maybe, but that’s not important. He’s not in it for gratitude. He’s not in it because he hopes she’ll love him back, though, yeah, that’s there, tangentially. He’s doing this because he loves her and he knows that love is something that is so very worth fighting for and he can’t let her down and if he fails he’s failing everyone and that is not an option and that is not how this is going to end. Not after almost a year. Not after all this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything will be alright. And that’s a fact.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Journalistic integrity gets a little too hard to follow through on when Ben finds himself a little too close to the situation, but it’s fine. He’s sure Sammy has some half-performative defeatist platitudes he could sprout, and he’s sure Pete could bitch about how journalistic integrity is already dead and Troy could say it’s all fine and dandy as long as Ben’s doing his best and Mary could say that Ben’s got a fire in him that’s at risk of burning nearby things if he lets it get too hot, and Ben wants to please them all, he wants to help them all, he wants to do this and to do this right, but it’s all so damn hard when it’s all so damn much. He feels, sometimes, like a machine that has too many inputs and not enough outputs and all his coding builds up inside of him until it comes bursting out of busted-up faucets before he has the chance to filter himself. And journalistic integrity, cold hard numbers, not falling prey to his own emotions? Those can’t always be a broken machine’s top priority.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fact,” he says slowly to himself, forcing his gears to stop whirring at top speed. “Fact. I fuckin’ hate not knowing for sure how this’ll go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gathers his notebook up. Flips through it. Finds the page that mentions Sammy and scrawls over it in black marker, which is more of a statement than anything else, because he has pictures of most of the pages of the book just in case, but it’s the thought that counts. Looks through months of planning, months that are all coming to a head tonight. Months spent in this inward spiral, losing himself in Emily, in the desperate, all-consuming need to do this. Months he can’t get back, but months entirely well-spent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fact: His particular style of operating isn’t exactly the most sustainable, nor is it the most healthy, but it works for him and it gets shit done and there’s not much he can do to change that. It’s going to bring Emily back, and that’s what matters. And, sure, he’s burning himself out and not getting enough sleep, but energy drinks can’t do much worse to his body than constant candy bars already have been doing since he was a kid. (Somewhere in the distance, Ben’s sure he can feel Sammy Stevens, salads and opinions on produce and all, shuddering at that.) Besides, he’s going to stop after tonight. Until he gets a new project, a new obsession, a new thing that occupies too much space in his brain and too much time in his life, and of course Emily is different than an all-consuming interest in researching the lore of King Falls, but in both cases, Ben spends far too much time ignoring his own needs in lieu of focusing outwards. Ben focuses outwards too much and Sammy focuses inwards too much and they balance each other out like that, he thinks, and hopefully, they’ll rub off on each other in the long run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take care of yourself,” Ben hears in Sammy’s voice, and then he soundly ignores that, because tonight, Ben Arnold doesn’t matter. He’s only secondary. This is about Emily, and Ben’s not going to worry about </span>
  <em>
    <span>himself </span>
  </em>
  <span>when Emily’s on the line.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s always really about someone else. He gives and gives and gives and he’s fine with giving because when he takes, he questions his friends and he breaks trust and he loses his happy place of a person, so, yeah, giving is all there is. Giving doesn’t question Sammy’s past and giving doesn’t have Emily driving alone up a mountain at night for him and giving is safer for everyone else and easy to do because Ben has so very much to give.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Part of Ben wants to find the balance between give and take, but he operates in extremes, and he hasn’t yet found firm footing on middle ground.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that balance is love, isn’t it? Love is what Ben has. Love is what Ben is. Love is what’s going to save the world, or whatever, and it might sound sappy, but Ben’s convinced that it’s one hundred percent true. And when Ben’s convinced of something, his views are pretty damn unswayable. Stubbornness might be a difficulty sometimes, but in cases like these, Ben holds his ground and holds it firm and everyone is made better by it. Everyone’s always made a little bit better by the obstinate, ever-present, bullheaded power of love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fact,” he says to himself, for the final time. “Fact. I love Emily. I love her. I love her, I love her, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>love </span>
  </em>
  <span>her. And I’ll see her again tonight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets in his car, notebook in his jacket and heart on his sleeve, and he drives.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated and u can come find me @ kickdshins on twt :D</p></blockquote></div></div>
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